“I’m sorry I listened to you the first time. I find myself trying to play short cuts. That’s a hell of a way to solve crimes. That’s the way they solve ’em on television, where they have only half an hour in which to show the crime, bring in the solution and drag in a half-dozen commercials, all in thirty little minutes. Count ’em, thirty.
“You go to hell. You’re corrupting me. I won’t watch television for fear my thinking will be contaminated. You’re corrupting me worse than television.”
He got up and walked out.
Ten minutes later he was back.
“I can’t get you out of my mind,” he said. “You’ve ruined my method of approach.”
He handed me the copy of Hardware Age that I’d picked up in Evelyn Ellis’ apartment.
“Ernestine said that you had this magazine with you when you came up to her apartment last night. When you left you forgot to take it with you.”
“And so?” I asked.
“What were you doing with a copy of Hardware Age? Why did you want it?”
“I just wanted to read it.”
“It’s an old copy. Where did you get it?”
I said, “I got it from Evelyn Ellis’ room in the hotel. I was reading it when she decided to get rough and get me out of there.”
“And you went?”
“I went.”
“Why the abrupt departure?”
“Because she was tearing her clothes off and was going to yell assault with intent to commit rape when she had ’em all off — and she didn’t have far to go.”
“Then the magazine is hers?”
“I guess so.”
“What would she be doing with it?”
I said, “If you look through it you’ll probably find a photograph of Evelyn in a bathing suit as Miss Hardware. She was chosen as the queen of the hardware convention.”
Hobert snapped his fingers and said, “There you go. Another example of what happens when you get away from steady, plodding detective work.”
“Why?”
“I turned every page of that damn thing from cover to cover,” he said, “trying to find her picture. It isn’t in there.
“That’s what comes of playing hunches. You and television will be the ruination of a lot of good cops.”
He was so mad he slammed the magazine down on the table and started to leave the room. He was within two feet of the door when it was opened by an officer who handed him a message typewritten on a piece of paper.
“Thought you might like to see this, Inspector,” he said.
Hobart looked at the message, frowned, looked at it again, said, “They’re sure?”
The officer nodded.
Hobart said, “All right. I’ll take it from here.”
He folded the message, shoved it down in his pocket and stood thoughtfully looking at the door as it closed behind the departing officer.
“All right,” he said, turning to me, “here’s a puzzle for you. You like to be brilliant. Go ahead and be brilliant on this one.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“The outfit that makes this knife hasn’t sold a single carving knife any place west of Denver except that one San Francisco shipment. They’re developing the territory regionally.
“Colfax and Bristol, the hardware jobbers here who saw the knife at the hardware convention, insisted on having the first shipment to the Coast, backing it up with a definite order. They got their shipment four days ago.
“Now then, every one of their salesmen has been checked and each man reports that he has his sample intact.”
“Well,” I said, “what would you do if you’d committed a murder with a knife, ditched the weapon and then somebody contacted you on the telephone and asked you to report whether or not you had the knife — what would you say?”
“Oh, sure,” Hobart said, “that occurred to me a long time ago. We’re going to have to have men check every one of those salesmen. But somehow I have an idea they’ll check out, and that will leave us right back where we started.”
He went out of the room. Because there was nothing else to do, I picked up the hardware magazine and started reading it from cover to cover.
Suddenly I found an item that made sense. I kicked myself for not having thought of it and went to the door and jerked it open.
A uniformed officer was sitting outside the door in a straight-backed chair tilted back against the wall, his heels braced on a cross-rung. As I opened the door he snapped forward so that the other two legs of the chair came down on the floor with a bang and his big bulk came up out of the chair. “No, you don’t, brother,” he said. “You stay right there.”
“All right, I stay here,” I said, “but get me Inspector Hobart. I have to see him.”
“Well, that’s something,” the officer said. “You’re running the place now?”
I said, “You get Inspector Hobart or you’re both going to be sorry,” stepped back inside the room and closed the door.
Ten minutes later Inspector Hobart came pushing into the room. “Now this,” he said, “has damn well got to be good. If it isn’t good, you’ll do your waiting in a cell.”
“I think it’s good,” I said.
“Let’s hope so. What is it, another brainy idea of flashing brilliance?”
I said, “An article in the Hardware Age. Want me to read it?”
“What’s it about?”
“Just a paragraph of news comments about the convention in New Orleans.”
“What does it say?”
I picked it up and read: “Christopher, Crowder and Doyle Cutlery Company of Chicago announced a new general utility carving knife which will be placed on the market first in the eastern territory and then in the western territory. A distinguishing feature of the knife is the resilient toughness of the steel which makes it possible to use an exceedingly thin blade. President Carl Christopher points out the blade is almost as thin as a sheet of paper. A new synthetic makes the plastic handle look like onyx.
“Evelyn Ellis, Miss American Hardware, presented carving sets to some hundred buyers who were asked to drop by the booth of the Christopher, Crowder and Doyle Cutlery Company between four and five in the afternoon and receive complimentary carving sets in plush-lined boxes.”
I folded the magazine back so it was open at the page from which I had been reading and handed it to Inspector Hobart.
He didn’t look at the magazine, but instead looked me over and said, “Somehow I can appreciate the way Frank Sellers feels.”
“What do you mean?”
“I regard you with mingled emotions,” Hobart said. “I’m not going to pretend that this isn’t an important lead. It’s one I should have thought of myself. Of course, this babe had one of those carving sets. After all, she was the queen of the hardware industry. She was taken to New Orleans and paraded around in evening gowns and bathing suits. She had all of her expenses paid, was given a big build-up and a lot of publicity.
“She must have picked up a lot of loot, and if she was giving away carving sets to buyers who stopped by the booth during the time the company was announcing its new number, it’s a cinch she picked up a carving set for herself. Now, all we’ve got to do is to get a search warrant, go through the hotel, find the box containing the fork that matches this knife and ask her where the hell the knife is and see what she says.
“That’s fine. I’m grateful. But you do these things too damned easy and there’s just a little too much of a flourish about the way you wrap these things up. Oh, hell, Lam, I suppose I’m nervous, irritable and upset. I’m in my office on the telephone flashing messages out to the dispatcher, getting reports, trying to cover the whole damn front and you sit in here with nothing to do except sharp-shoot. No wonder you can highgrade the stuff. But it makes me just a little mad.”